Back to the Roots!
[06.05.07]
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On Sunday we did some more stumbling-through-the-forest-looking-for-streams!
What we found first however was this:
A biiiiiiig bird-eating spider crossed our path - an incredible photo
opportunity for me! Impressive beasty, eh? It's diameter was way
bigger than my hand (including fingers...). Note also the considerable safety
distance, especially also of barefoot Stephan! These animals
are quite 'cute' in the Terrarium, but out here, face to
mandibles-bristling-face it's enormous!
When we tried to chase it off the road to prevent
running over it with our car, it got really pissed
off with us! Nice smile...
Finally we managed to get past the spider and into the jungle. If you look
carefully you might catch a
glimpse of a well camouflaged Schindi - a very elusive and shy species of
biologist... Right: only from
the road you can actually recognise the forest as such. Up closer you got the
well known problem with
the many trees hiding the forest, yah know...
And now more of the same in a flashy landscape format...
Another spectacular critter we found was this millepede. Even though they're
quite common and play an
important role in the decomposition of terrestrial leaf litter, they're only
rarely seen like that. Really
rare in this ecosystem are tree ferns as depicted on the right. Very pretty and
quite harmless...
Maybe you can't imagine how hot and humid it can
get in the jungle! You're immediately soaked as
soon as you set foot into the forest!
Some humidity, induced by prespiration and precipitation, is also apparent on
Andy and me. Still, two happy campers I would say!
And finally we found it "our" stream where we will conduct our experiments! Good
size, acceptable
substrate and even some (possibly) leaf-shredding macro invertebrates (i.e. bugs...).
To the right one
of the countless tree trunk bridges: fun but also tricky to cross, and slippery
when wet, as I found out
the hard way... *groan*
Schindiana Jones?!?
Lunch we had in the light though...
We also visited a few more streams, but the one shown above was our favourite. But we got plenty of rain in the afternoon, were shredded by killer-grass and eaten alive by mosquitoes...
In the evening though we struck back, went to the restaurant and avenged ourselves on the jungle fauna, feeding on jungle-boar fricassee served with fried bananas,creole bean stew and a wonderful papaya-gratin with cheese. And cool beer. And more rain on the way home.